2017 Democratic Thread

[bmags]

This was a very good scocca piece.

https://medium.com/@tscocca/the-new-york-ti...on-a192c232a4c9

 

This new wave of countering the counter arguments of the argument you never even really made reminds me of when Asher Roth debuted an album countering the backlash that he was just an eminem clone when nobody even knew he was at that point to make a backlash. Asher Roth foreshadowed politics.

[StrangeSox]

ANATOMY OF A PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN

If you want to know why Democrats aren’t winning elections, have a look at the flyers they send voters…

 

 

The Ossoff/Handel propaganda contest reaffirms that Democrats continue to fumble in their quest for an actual message, and for a reason why voters should support their party. Republicans have a very good story, one that has both a positive and negative side: you are hurting, we will fix it, the Democrats caused this, they will hurt you further. Democrats, on the other hand, keep going for: Republicans are bad, while we are competent. Missing are (1) an understanding of voters’ needs and (2) a plan to address those needs. Karen Handel’s flyers promise to expand the military to keep the country safe, to repeal Obamacare in order to improve your health, and to cure breast cancer. (Leave aside, for the moment, what nonsense all of this is.) Jon Ossoff’s flyers promise to implement GAO recommendations for the consolidation of various data-collection facilities at the federal level. Sometimes it barely seems as if Democrats are trying.

[bmags]

Ugh god. It doesn't matter. The hyperventilating from the left over every dem mailer is nauseating.

[StrangeSox]

check out the paragraphs immediately after the one I quoted!

 

Of course, it could be that both parties were just wasting their money on this barrage of moronic propaganda. I am not sure how many voters actually modify their choices on the basis of these things, and I’m certainly dubious that sending 40 flyers has a more productive effect than sending 30 or 20. There could, however, be a kind of “Prisoner’s Dilemma” or “arms race” in operation here, where if neither party sent any flyers, the outcome would be the same, but if one party sends a huge stack, they’ll have a better chance, so everyone ends up having to spend as many flyers as they can possibly afford to print. This is somewhat unfortunate, since it means that the only ultimate benefit of this exercise is the minor economic windfall it provides to print shops and tree farmers.

 

One should be cautious about taking lessons from this, because the causal links are so difficult to draw. But it is simultaneously true that (1) Jon Ossoff lost by 4 points and (2) Jon Ossoff’s sales pitch was, for the most part, godawful. Could he have improved on that if he hadn’t sent mailers with Osama bin Laden’s face on one side and Ossoff’s face on the other? I cannot rightfully say. But, at the very least, no harm should come from following the principle that your campaign messages ought to say something. Possibly even something substantive and inspiring. It’s just an idea.

 

the article is mostly about looking at the dem's overall message/messaging via analyzing the mailers, not about the importance of the mailers themselves.

Edited September 19, 2017 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

[StrangeSox]

Part of Wisconsin's Foxconn deal is giving them preferential treatment in the state courts. Love our economic system where public institutions are held hostage to capital interests.

 

http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politic...find/684418001/

[StrangeSox]

ICE is evil

 

Border Patrol Arrests Parents While Infant Awaits Serious Operation

 

When 2-month-old Isaac Enrique Sanchez was diagnosed with pyloric stenosis, a condition that causes vomiting, dehydration and weight loss in infants, his parents were told that their son's condition was curable. The problem was that no hospital in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas had a pediatric surgery team capable of performing the operation on his stomach.

 

To make Isaac well, Oscar and Irma Sanchez would need to take their infant son to Driscoll Children's Hospital, in Corpus Christi, Texas. It was just a couple of hours up the highway, but for them it was a world away.

 

The Sanchezes, who are undocumented, would need to pass a Border Patrol checkpoint.

 

"The nurse told us we had to go there," Oscar says in Spanish. "We said we couldn't go."

 

While they pondered their predicament in a Harlingen, Texas, hospital, a Border Patrol agent showed up in the waiting room — Oscar Sanchez suspects a nurse turned them in — and said he could arrange for officers to escort the parents through the checkpoint to Corpus. But the agent said when they arrived, they would be arrested and put into deportation proceedings. The couple agreed.

[StrangeSox]

Outlets That Scolded Sanders Over Deficits Uniformly Silent on $700B Pentagon Handout

 

Putting the Pentagon budget increases in context:

 

Where did all the concern over deficits go? After two years of the media lamenting, worrying and feigning outrage over the cost of Bernie Sanders’ two big-budget items—free college and single-payer healthcare—the same outlets are uniformly silent, days after the largest military budget increase in history.

 

Monday, the Senate voted to increase military spending by a whopping $81 billion, from $619 billion to $700 billion—an increase of over 13 percent. (The House passed its own $696 billion Pentagon budget in July—Politico, 7/14/17.) The reaction thus far to this unprecedented handout to military contractors and weapons makers has been one big yawn.

 

No write-ups worrying about the cost increase in the Washington Post or Vox or NPR. No op-eds expressing concern for “deficits” in the New York Times, Boston Globe or US News. No news segments on Fox News or CNN on the “unaffordable” increase in government spending. All the outlets that spent considerable column inches and airtime stressing over Sanders’ social programs are suddenly indifferent to “how we will afford” this latest military giveaway. The US government votes 89–9 to add $81 billion extra to the balance sheet—the equivalent of the government creating three new Justice Departments, four more NASAs, seven Treasury Departments, ten EPAs or 546 National Endowments for the the Arts—and there’s zero discussion as to “how we will pay for it.”

 

The increase--not the entire military budget, just the increase--is almost twice as much as it would cost to fully fund Sanders free-college-for-all plan. We've always got money for more bombs, but never enough for things that would actually benefit society.

[bmags]

What's that DC debt group that is "non-partisan" but only shows up when Dems are in office?

[StrangeSox]

all of them?

[bmags]

Man is this article hard to read:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fix-th..._n_3254158.html

 

Oh, 2013. Magical times.

 

"There was even someone dressed up like a giant can with the words “The Can Kicks Back” — the motto for Fix the Debt’s millennial arm."

 

"The event was organized through a local dance group, and participants received a $65 stipend. Individuals — many of them college students — told The Huffington Post they heard about it on CraigsList, ads on entertainment websites and through their modeling agency."

 

"Most of the flash mob participants who spoke with The Huffington Post on Friday seemed to be there more for the stipend than the cause, although Amber Lee Brown, a student at George Mason University, said she went to the group’s website and liked what she read.

 

“They actually want to fix the problem, not argue against each other,” she said."

[StrangeSox]

Russian operatives used Facebook ads to exploit divisions over black political activism and Muslims

 

The batch of more than 3,000 Russian-bought ads that Facebook is preparing to turn over to Congress shows a deep understanding of social divides in American society, with some ads promoting African-American rights groups including Black Lives Matter and others suggesting that these same groups pose a rising political threat, say people familiar with the covert influence campaign.

 

The Russian campaign — taking advantage of Facebook’s ability to simultaneously send contrary messages to different groups of users based on their political and demographic characteristics -- also sought to sow discord among religious groups. Other ads highlighted support for Democrat Hillary Clinton among Muslim women.

 

These targeted messages, along with others that have surfaced in recent days, highlight the sophistication of an influence campaign slickly crafted to mimic and infiltrate U.S. political discourse while also seeking to heighten tensions between groups already wary of one another.

 

Social media has made it so easy to hyper-target ads and messaging.

[StrangeSox]

This is a couple of years old now, but this long piece goes over how dire of a situation Puerto Rico was in even before the hurricane hit. Hedge funds and bankruptcy laws were already destroying the island before this hurricane came through and finished the job.

 

Inside the Billion-Dollar Battle for Puerto Rico’s Future

The money poured in by the millions, then by the hundreds of millions, and finally by the billions. Over weak coffee in a conference room in Midtown Manhattan last year, a half-dozen Puerto Rican officials exhaled: Their cash-starved island had persuaded some of the country’s biggest hedge funds to lend them more than $3 billion to keep the government afloat.

 

There were plenty of reasons for the hedge funds to like the deal: They would be earning, in effect, a 20 percent return. And under the island’s Constitution, Puerto Rico was required to pay back its debt before almost any other bills, whether for retirees’ health care or teachers’ salaries.

 

But within months, Puerto Rico was saying it had run out of money, and the relationship between the impoverished United States territory and its unlikely saviors fell apart, setting up an extraordinary political and financial fight over Puerto Rico’s future.

 

On the surface, it is a battle over whether Puerto Rico should be granted bankruptcy protections, putting at risk tens of billions of dollars from investors around the country. But it is also testing the power of an ascendant class of ultrarich Americans to steer the fate of a territory that is home to more than three million fellow citizens.

 

Others fear a different precedent: A handful of wealthy investors, they argue, are trying to rewrite the social contract of an entire United States territory. Puerto Rican officials say they have already cut public services and slashed central government spending by a fifth to keep ahead of payments to the hedge funds and financiers.

 

“What they are doing, by getting all the resources for themselves, is undermining the viability of Puerto Rico as a commonwealth,” said Joseph E. Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist. “They want their money now, and they want to get the rules set so that they can make money for the next 20 years.”

[StrangeSox]

Man is this article hard to read:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fix-th..._n_3254158.html

 

Oh, 2013. Magical times.

 

"There was even someone dressed up like a giant can with the words “The Can Kicks Back” — the motto for Fix the Debt’s millennial arm."

 

"The event was organized through a local dance group, and participants received a $65 stipend. Individuals — many of them college students — told The Huffington Post they heard about it on CraigsList, ads on entertainment websites and through their modeling agency."

 

"Most of the flash mob participants who spoke with The Huffington Post on Friday seemed to be there more for the stipend than the cause, although Amber Lee Brown, a student at George Mason University, said she went to the group’s website and liked what she read.

 

“They actually want to fix the problem, not argue against each other,” she said."

 

At least the GOP is open about it

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/28/us/polit...s-congress.html

 

A new tax cut is emerging to rival those of the Bush years, and the deficit hawks have hardly peeped.

 

“It’s a great talking point when you have an administration that’s Democrat-led,” said Representative Mark Walker, Republican of North Carolina and the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, a group of about 150 conservative House members. “It’s a little different now that Republicans have both houses and the administration.”

 

No one cares about the debt except as an excuse to cut funding for programs they want to get rid of anyway.

[StrangeSox]

A New Study Shows Just How Many Americans Were Blocked From Voting in Wisconsin Last Year

 

Trump won the state by 22,748 votes.

 

A comprehensive study released today suggests how many missing votes can be attributed to the new law. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison surveyed registered voters who didn’t cast a 2016 ballot in the state’s two biggest counties—Milwaukee and Dane, which is home to Madison. More than 1 out of 10 nonvoters (11.2 percent) said they lacked acceptable voter ID and cited the law as a reason why they didn’t vote; 6.4 percent of respondents said the voter ID law was the “main reason” they didn’t vote.

 

The study’s lead author, University of Wisconsin political scientist Kenneth Mayer, says between roughly 9,000 and 23,000 registered voters in the reliably Democratic counties were deterred from voting by the ID law. Extrapolating statewide, he says the data suggests as many as 45,000 voters sat out the election, though he cautioned that it was difficult to produce an estimate from just two counties.*

 

The study also found socioeconomic and racial disparities among those impacted by the new law. “The burdens of voter ID fell disproportionately on low-income and minority populations,” writes Mayer. More than 20 percent of registrants coming from homes with incomes less than $25,000 say they were kept from voting by the law; 8.3 percent of white voters surveyed were deterred, compared with 27.5 percent of African Americans.

 

The new study also suggests that the number of voters disenfranchised by the law is far greater than the number of fraud cases that it was designed to stop. In 2014, during a federal trial where Wisconsin failed to present a single case of voter impersonation that the law would have prevented, a federal judge found that 300,000 voters lacked the strict forms of ID required by the state.

 

“The number of people who were deterred from voting is many thousands of times greater than the number of cases of voter impersonation that are prevented by this law,” Mayer says.

[Dick Allen]

A New Study Shows Just How Many Americans Were Blocked From Voting in Wisconsin Last Year

 

Trump won the state by 22,748 votes.

Fake news. They aren't even mentioning the millions upon millions of illegal votes placed. And every single one of them was for Hillary.

[StrangeSox]

An Alabama Senate race should not be this close, but Roy Moore is an unhinged fundamentalist lunatic so

 

Lastly, the #ALSen horserace.

Opinion Savvy/ DDHQ poll:

Roy Moore 50.2%

Doug Jones 44.5%

Full details: https://t.co/YNV1EGw71h

— Decision Desk HQ (@DecisionDeskHQ) September 29, 2017

 

[Balta1701]

The 2018 Republican Senate Budget Resolution removes the requirement that bills be scored by the Congressional Budget Office before they are voted on.

[Balta1701]

An Alabama Senate race should not be this close, but Roy Moore is an unhinged fundamentalist lunatic so

An organization founded by Moore hosted a couple "Secession day" celebrations at the facility they run in the last 10 years. His opponent prosecuted the 1963 Birmingham Church Bombing culprits. It's 2017. The Secession Day guy is leading this poll.

[StrangeSox]

There was a major gerrymandering case involving WI at the Supreme Court today, and some court reporters think Kennedy's questions indicate he might vote to strike down partisan gerrymanders. That would have huge implications across the country and be a pretty solid improvement for our democracy.

 

The focus on gerrymandering is essential, and the Supreme Court will take up the issue Tuesday, hearing oral argument on a Wisconsin case that could ultimately transform elections nationwide. The legal scholars and voting-rights activists who brought the case, now dubbed Gill v. Whitford, have asserted that Wisconsin’s state Assembly and state Senate district maps were rigged by Governor Scott Walker’s hyper-partisan legislative allies to lock in the majorities they gained in the wave election of 2010. Republicans gerrymandered legislative district lines so aggressively that in the next election, even as Wisconsin Democrats won 174,000 more votes than Republicans in races for state Assembly seats, Republicans won a 60-39 majority in the chamber.

 

The gerrymandering in Wisconsin is so bad that Republicans got a 60-39 majority with 47% of the vote.

 

 

Before Mitch McConnell caused a constitutional crisis and stole a supreme court seat, I was pretty hopeful we'd get some real, much needed electoral reform. Hopefully, Kennedy still makes that happen.

Edited October 3, 2017 by StrangeSox

[GoSox05]

Not really sure where to put this story, but it's brutal. Bleak stuff.

 

They thought they were going to rehab. They ended up in chicken plants

[Jenksismyhero]

Not really sure where to put this story, but it's brutal. Bleak stuff.

 

They thought they were going to rehab. They ended up in chicken plants

 

I don't like that it's for private industry, but I've been an advocate of more of these programs over jail time. Think if we put low level offenders to work cleaning up vacant lots and graffiti or starting more city beautification programs. They get punished (having to work of their crimes) and the public benefits.

[StrangeSox]

I'm not sure how I feel about forced labor either way, but there are parts of our 'justice' system that are modern day slavery. Private prisons where inmates are forced to work for private, for-profit companies for pennies an hour at best.

 

e: those jobs should done by paid employees imo, would help more people than forcing prison labor to do it!

 

 

Perhaps no rehab better exemplifies this allegiance to big business than CAAIR. It was started in 2007 by chicken company executives struggling to find workers. By forming a Christian rehab, they could supply plants with a cheap and captive labor force while helping men overcome their addictions.

 

The program has become an invaluable labor source. Over the years, Simmons Foods repeatedly has laid off paid employees while expanding its use of CAAIR. Simmons now is so reliant on the program for some shifts that the plants likely would shut down if the men didn’t show up, according to former staff members and plant supervisors.

Edited October 4, 2017 by StrangeSox

[GoSox05]

I'm not sure how I feel about forced labor either way, but there are parts of our 'justice' system that are modern day slavery. Private prisons where inmates are forced to work for private, for-profit companies for pennies an hour at best.

 

e: those jobs should done by paid employees imo, would help more people than forcing prison labor to do it!

 

 

I'm assuming they were having a hard time finding workers because they were probably not willing to pay them a living wage and the work was dangerous.

 

Maybe offer people more money and better working conditions/hours and people will want to work there.

 

[illinilaw08]

I don't like that it's for private industry, but I've been an advocate of more of these programs over jail time. Think if we put low level offenders to work cleaning up vacant lots and graffiti or starting more city beautification programs. They get punished (having to work of their crimes) and the public benefits.

 

Yeah, huge difference between a requirement of public service (particularly on something like city beautification projects that are generally volunteer only anyway) as a diversion program to time in prison/jail and having the prison supply free labor to the private companies...